supply of tads.  It is considered fair and decent that each batch of tadpoles should live in their prison (a milk bottle) only one week.  The following Sunday they go back to the pond, and a new generation take their places.  There is some subtle kinship, we think, between children and tadpoles.  No childhood is complete until it has watched their sloomy and impassive faces munching against the glass, and seen the gradual egress (as the encyclopaedia pedantically puts it) of their tender limbs, the growing froggishness of their demeanour.

Some time when you are exploring in the Britannica, by the way, after you have read about Tactics and William Howard Taft, turn to the article on Tadpoles and see if you can recognize them as described by the learned G.A.B.  An amusing game, we submit, would be to take a number of encyclopaedia descriptions of familiar things, and see how many of our friends could identify them under their scientific nomenclature.

But it is very pleasant to dally about the pond on a mild April morning.  While the Urchiness mutters among the violets, picking blue fistfuls of stalkless heads, the Urchin, on a plank at the waterside, studies these weedy shallows which are lively with all manner of mysterious excitement, and probes a waterlogged stump in hope to recapture Brer Tarrypin, who once was ours for a short while.  Gissing (the juvenile and too enthusiastic dog) has to be kept away from the pond by repeated sticks thrown as far as possible in another direction; otherwise he insists on joining the tadpole search, and, poking his snout under water, attempts to bark at the same time, with much coughing and smother.

The tadpoles, once caught, are taken home in a small yellow pail.  They seem quite cheerful.  They are kept, of course, in their native fluid, which is liberally thickened with the oozy emulsion of moss, mud, and busy animalculae that were dredged up with them in clutches along the bottom of the pond.  They lie, thoughtful, at the bottom of their milk bottle, occasionally flourishing furiously round their prison.  But, since reading that article in the Britannica, we are more tender toward them.  For the learned G.A.B. says:  “A glandular streak extending from the nostril toward the eye is the lachrymal canal.”  Is it possible that tadpoles weep?  We will look at them again when we go home to-night.  We are, in the main, a kind-hearted host.  If they show any signs of effusion....

      [Illustration]

MAGIC IN SALAMIS

Why is it (we were wondering, as we walked to the station) that these nights of pearly wet Long Island fog make the spiders so active?  The sun was trying to break through the mist, and all the way down the road trees, bushes, and grass were spangled with cob-webs, shining with tiny pricks and gems of moisture.  These damp, mildewy nights that irritate us and bring that queer soft grayish fur on the backs of our books